GitLab's CI/CD capabilities makes this CIO continually happy.

Item: GitLab
Rating: 9
Author: Bill Kratzer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

GitLab is really at the core of our development process. It serves as the company's central home for the git repositories. All automated builds, merge requests, and automated deployments run through GitLab. With GitLab, the company is communicating better, reviewing more of each other's code, and deploying faster, better, and more often.

Pros and Cons

Merge request (review, feedback, and approval)
Automated code deploys to various types of systems
Issue management is actually refreshingly great

Projects documentation repositories would be great (I'd love to see integrated project wikis that completely embrace markdown)

Return on Investment

Developers are building better, well-tested code
Developers are deploying code more often
Developers and DevOps are spending less time deploying complex production systems

Alternatives Considered

Bamboo and Jenkins

The company has had prior experience with Bamboo. GitLab has much more functionality than Bamboo and worked better with some of our legacy projects. While Jenkins is free, it really isn't free - the amount of work required to get something up and running would have been counter-productive in our organization. GitLab is money extremely well spent!

Security

Our company is currently using the Premium product and not the Ultimate product. Therefore, we do not currently have access to many of the security features offered in that higher tier.

Continuous Integration

The adoption of GitLab across the company has enabled our organization to build more frequently, test more frequently, and merge changes with confidence. This organization is deploying code faster and better with much less effort. It's truly a Win-Win-Win.

Key Insights

Do you think GitLab delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with GitLab's feature set?

Yes

Did GitLab live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of GitLab go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy GitLab again?

Yes

Other Software Used

1Password, IntelliJ IDEA

Likelihood to Recommend

GitLab is great for organizations that want to automate the CI/CD pipeline. Getting running on GitLab took very little time. Migration from BitBucket was a piece of cake. If you have projects that already build on a command line, you'll find the transition to GitLab will be relatively straightforward. Automated builds have put our organization into a better compliance position with some of our partners and have enabled more developers in the organization to deploy code with confidence.